Image-Based Motion Analysis for Self-Reconfigurable Mobile Robot With Integrated Docking

This paper presents the design integration and experimental results of target-based autonomous locomotion of a Self-Reconfigurable Mobile Robot. Uncertainties in the sensory data can accumulate the misalignments in locomotion behavior of the robot. Such misalignments can result in a poor coupling performance resulting in the failure of the overall docked system. Therefore, it is desirable for a robot to be capable of mechanically tolerating such misalignments. As a result, a Hybrid-Wheeled mobile robot, interfaced with a 2-DOF, high misalignment tolerant coupling (GHEFT) mechanism is presented in this paper. This combined assembly is used as a source of locomotion for autonomous docking in a multi-robot assembly using Image-Based Visual Servoing (IBVS). The resulting output is then implemented in a simulated environment for the autonomous locomotion of the robot. Experimental results demonstrate the feature motion and trajectory followed under the hybrid locomotion of the robot.